WHOOP Could Change Future Of Sports Storytelling

NEW YORK — What if Michael Jordan had worn a WHOOP strap leading up to his famous “flu game” and fans back in 1997 had access to that data on how his body was doing?

WHOOP founder and CEO Will Ahmed is guessing that based upon his own data that he saw while recovering from the flu that Jordan might have had something around a two percent recovery that would have been recorded. Jordan went on to pour in 38 points while fighting through illness in the Chicago Bulls’ win in a pivotal Game 5 of the NBA Finals. With WHOOP, fans around the world might have been able to use data to truly see just how much Jordan had to fight.

“You now have some relationship really to understand like heart or hustle,” Ahmed said Wednesday at Hashtag Sports. “Those are things that commentators talk about a lot. Like what if you could actually quantify heart? How run-down someone is relative to how they perform? I just think there’s going to be a whole new dynamic around sports, and I think it’s going to permeate throughout society.”

That’s how Ahmed sees the future of storytelling in sports, and it could be coming soon. Major League Baseball has approved the player use of WHOOP during games. At least two NBA players have worn the straps during games.

And in the NFL, a deal was recently struck that provides every player with WHOOP to have the ability to commercialize their WHOOP data through the NFLPA’s group licensing program. It’s not expressly banned for players to wear one in games.

“Down the line you could envision a world where you’re Tom Brady and Matt Ryan during the fourth quarter of the Super Bowl and being able to compare their heart rates at different points of the game,” said Ahmad Nassar, President of NFL Players Inc.

“I think we’re closer than people realize, that people think…From a technological standpoint, there’s really no reason why we can’t have that now. So it’s really just a matter of from a business standpoint getting there.”

WHOOP can quantify the strain and recovery for athletes, and the straps can be worn all day and all night to measure sleep as well. Ahmed, the WHOOP CEO, said he has seen how a higher recovery can be correlated to better performance.

“I think the story around wins and losses and athletic performance is going to become much more continuous,” he said. “There’s going to be things that are happening that are affecting the way a fan is thinking about a game that’s an hour from now or a week from now.”

“So if you’re the fan and you turn on the television set and all of a sudden you can see recoveries of different players, you can start thinking ‘Oh wow, how’s that going to affect this matchup?'”

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About Diamond Leung

Diamond is responsible for SportTechie’s editorial vision and execution. Before joining SportTechie in August 2016, he worked as the Golden State Warriors beat writer for the Bay Area News Group and covered both their NBA championship and 73-win seasons. He previously covered Michigan State for MLive.com, college basketball for ESPN.com and the Los Angeles Dodgers for The Press-Enterprise. He lives in New York City and is a native of San Francisco.
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